For The Alliance
by Wisekill1
Summary: How would the Mass Effect universe look if the ruins on Mars had a working Prothean VI that told the Human explorers about the Reapers? Read this story and you might find out!
1. Chapter 0, Timeline

**Hello there, I've read and followed a great amount of AU stories on this website while I love most of them I never found anything like what I'm about to write. I will try to keep myself as much to the Mass Effect timeline as possible but there will be some major changes that are going to change the Systems Alliance.**

**So please bear with me as I start with the not so easy task or rewriting of Mass Effect history.**

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**2075 **The Manswell Expedition is launched.

**2103** The European Space Agency founds the first permanent Human settlement on Mars: Lowell City.

**2143 **Construction is started on Gargarin Station beyond the orbit of Pluto, it is supposed to research and experiment on Faster-Than-Light travel.

**2145 **A signal is send from the Prothean ruins on Mars, Humanity hears it and moves to investigate. When they arrive at the location they come into contact with something that will change Human history, a working Prothean VI. The VI gives the human explorers information about the Charon Relay, element zero, the Reapers and much more.

**2146** The Systems Alliance charter is signed by the eighteen largest nations on Earth. Gargarin station is being modified to serve as a headquarters for the new Systems Alliance.

**2147 **Debate rages over the question If the Charon relay must be opened or that Humanity will remain in the Sol system, eventually both the United Nations and the Systems Alliance decide against it.

**2148 **The Systems Alliance decides to research other means of FTL travel.

Nuclear missile silos are built on Pluto with orders to nuke all unknown ships activating the Charon Relay and entering the Sol system.

**2150 **The Alliance launches her first FTL capable Frigate, The Waterloo's mission is to recover the lost Manswell expedition and explore Alpha Centauri system. The mission is successful and Humanity settles on her first extra solar planet, the colony is named Demeter.

**2153 **The Alliance starts building large fleets and a couple more nearby planets are colonized, all without using Mass Relays.

**2154** Shepard is born.

Gargarin station is completed, and will serve as the headquarters of the Alliance.

**2155 **A prototype Frigate named the Nanshan is send to Arcturus without using the Mass Relay, its mission depends on the situation of the system when they arrive. If the other Relays in the system are activated the Nanshan is to avoid all contact and return to Gargarin but if all the Relays are inactive the Nanshan has permission to open the Charon Relay.

**2156 **The Charon relay is opened and the Nanshan returns home. The Alliance decides to put most of its defenses at Arcturus because they know that the Reapers will use the Relay system. This will put Earth out of the danger zone of possible tray shots and torpedoes.

**2159** The Gargarin station is deemed to small for the Growing Alliance, construction starts on Arcturus station.

**2160 **A number or other Relays are opened, all of course with scout ships traveling to the destination systems first.

**2165 **A Activated Relay is spotted on the other side of the Shanxi Relay, all activation of other Relays is stopped and the Alliance starts building defense platforms around it.

**2168** The Alliance starts researching stealth technology that they plan to use to explore the relay system beyond Shanxi and gather all information about the current inhabitants of the Citadel.

**2172 **Shepard enlists in the Systems Alliance.

**2175 **The experimental stealth Frigate Metaurus travels beyond the Shanxi Relay and copies all available information from the present comm buoy. The Metaurus returns to Shanxi undetected, scientist from all over the world start to translate the information.

**2176 **The Alliance wants to know more about the civilizations beyond the Shanxi Relay and starts funding ways to make a ship literally invisible.

**2182 **The experimental Stealth ship Normandy is launched to explore the systems beyond the Shanxi Relay, gather as much information as possible and to warn the Citadel races about the Reapers if they are not yet aware of their coming. Commander Shepard is Andersons second in command on this ship.

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**Hello, Wisekill1 here! I hope you like this timeline that I've made up I personally think that this Alternate Universe story will be very interesting. I already have a plan how to get the non-human crew onto the Normandy.**

**Please review, follow and favorite if you want me to start the real story from this timeline!**

**And you can always review or PM me if you think something is wrong or should be changed, I keep a lot of Mass Effect wiki tabs open while writing this but it's still possible to make a mistake every once in a while.**


	2. Chapter 1

**Here it is people, the first chapter of this AU, I sincerely hope will like it!**

**Disclaimer, I do not own Mass Effect in any way, the original characters are however mine.**

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"The world is my country, science my religion"

~Christiaan Huygens; 1629-1695

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_Date: 21 of January 2183 (Earth calendar)  
Location: SSV Normandy (Systems Alliance Stealth Reconnaissance Frigate)_

Commander John Shepard stood behind flight lieutenant Jeff Moreau's chair, the chair was without doubt the most comfortable chair on the ship and the only one made out of real leather until you traveled all the way back to Shanxi, 179 lightyears away from where John was standing right now. Needless to say everyone on the ship was jealous of Joker's chair, John had to pull some strings to make sure the chair was installed but it was worth it.

As John looked out the window the Normandy just dropped out of FTL travel on the other side of the Shanxi relay, they had been traveling for two months now and everyone on the ship was getting tired of it.

"I can't believe our mission is to spy on aliens, did you see the pictures? Maybe we should abduct ourselves a few Asari... you know? For science and stuff?" Said Joker with a smile on his face, Shepard only chuckled in response and went straight to business.

"I want a passive scan of the system, after that continue on the planned path."

"Roger that, let's see if there's somebody home." Responded Joker before tapping a number of holographic interfaces. "Uhhm Commander, you might want to see this."

"What's going on Joker?" Demanded Shepard who had no idea what the interfaces were saying.

"There are other ships here, a small group of frigates and a cruiser are trying to board another frigate!"

"I can't believe this is happening just when we arrive here." Said Shepard while shaking his head in disbelief, suddenly he heard Captain Andersons voice over the ship's intercom.

"All hands battle stations!"

Shepard immediately jumped into action rushing past navigation and communication crew members who were strapping themselves into their workstations. As Shepard made his way towards the cargo bay the Damage control team rushed past him, they were already wearing their hard spacesuits for combat repairs and were to spend the entire battle inside the airlock. Ready to repair any hull breach the moment it was detected, he already felt sorry for them. Shepard quickly started working on putting his own combat armor on. After he finally sealed his helmet into place he looked around him.

Gunnery chief Ashley Williams was already in her combat armor, Staff Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko was busy putting on his chest piece and Richard Jenkins was nervously looking around himself, fully armored except for his helmet. The other marines were already in their armor or just putting on the last pieces.

"Williams" Shepard said and Ashley looked up immediately " Take Tucks, Grenado and Barret and secure the living quarters." Ashley nodded and she and the rest of the marines ran off to secure their positions.

"Jenkins, Fredricks, Dubyansky and Lowe. You're with my on the CIC. The rest of you stay with Alenko and keep the cargo bay and drive core secured!"

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_Location: Azula (Asari Exploration Frigate)_

"Geth are right behind us, I can't lose them!" Tasi, the pilot of the Azula was having a very bad day. Just a few hours ago she was traveling to a unknown system that was suspected to have Prothean ruins but when she arrived in the system the Geth were waiting for them, she was certain someone on the ship had betrayed their destination but she would have to deal with that later.

"by the goddess, they are charging their Mass Accelerator cannon" one of the bridge officers said.

Tasi knew what to do, she knew she couldn't dodge the Geth destroyers attacks forever, she quickly activated the ships intercom "All hands abandon ship, get the your escape pods."

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_Location: Escape pod Azula-5_

Liara T'Soni, heir of the T'Soni Lineage sat silently in her escape pod, trough the window she could see the Azula moving farther and farther away from her, the Salarian professor Mordin Solus was muttering in himself.

"Need to destroy data from omni-tool, but Geth can probably restore it. Should install false data, no... don't have the time... Problematic..."

Liara had a perfect view over the destruction of the Azula. A 17 mm slug traveling close to 1 percent of lightspeed was shot out of the Geth Destroyers main spinal gun and impacted on the Azula a moment later, the slug punched right trough the frigates armor and hit the drive core, the drive core in turn exploded and vaporized all that was left of the ship.

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**You see, this makes sense because Therum, the planet that Liara was supposed to be on at this time lies in Alliance space so nobody knows about the Prothean ruins there, logically they will start searching for some ruins.**

**I do have a question that I would like answered, do you guys prefer long chapter with long brakes between each other or would you like short chapters with smaller brakes. I'm not a very quick writer so you'll have to decide. You can tell me by PM or review.**


	3. Chapter 2

**Here is my new chapter, I've kept all your feedback in mind so I will give better descriptions of the surroundings now and I made the chapter longer.**

**I also want to apologize for the long wait, I've been very busy the last few weeks and I write in my spare time so you can understand that I didn't have much time to write.**

**Disclaimer, I do not own Mass Effect in any way, the original characters are however mine.**

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"Your are always a student, never a master. You have to keep moving forward."

~Conrad Hall; 1926-2003

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_Date: 21 of January 2183 (Earth calendar)  
Location: SSV Normandy (Systems Alliance Stealth Reconnaissance Frigate)_

The CIC of the Normandy was filled with a professional silence as Captain Anderson stood over the galaxy map, at the moment the map only showed a map of their current system. Shepard could see that the Geth ship was marked red and the Asari one yellow.

After a few seconds Anderson suddenly looked up. "All we know is that the Geth probably want something on that ship and they want it bad, otherwise they wouldn't have traveled past the Perseus Veil. We know it has been hundreds of years since the Geth were last seen outside of the Veil. The machines and likely to follow the Reapers when they arrive just as the Prothean AI's did, therefor we can't allow them to have whatever or whoeverwas on that Asari ship. Joker, bring us in firing range but maintain our cloak."

"Yes sir, let's kick the robots in their cold metal balls." was Jokers reply before he went to work quickly

Shepard knew that to for this to work they had to surprise the Geth, they did not respond to the Normandy entering the system so the element of surprise was still on their side. he only hoped Anderson could exploit that advantage and defeat the Geth, because the odds weren't on the Normandy's side at the moment.

It took the Normandy a few minutes to get the perfect firing angle on the Geth Cruiser, In those minutes Shepard watched as the other Geth Frigates slowly made their way towards the Asari escape pods.

"We're in position." Reported Joker "If the Javelin missiles actually take down the Cruiser's shields we've got a clear shot at their Drive Core"

"Good, deactivate the Stealth systems and fire the missiles at my mark" Answered Anderson "3.. 2... 1... Mark!"

According to the Normandy's VI it took the Geth Cruiser .0004 seconds to register the Normandy and another .09 to decide what their next course of action should be. The Cruiser slowly turned towards the Normandy while dozens of Javelin missiles tore trough the kinetic barriers or the Geth ship. But the small correction in their flight path was enough for the 15 mm Havoc Slug to miss the drive core, luckly for the Normandy it was a Havoc Slug so where on the ship it impacts doesn't really matter. The 5 flecks of antimatter are released out of their magnetic bottles on impact with the hull of the cruiser. The resulting release of raw energy ripped the hostile ship apart.

"Ha, take that you son of a bitch!" Yelled Joker when he saw the ship explode in front of him"

"Sir, the other two frigates are turning their weapons towards us, they're to close to the escape pods to use HAVOC Slugs and we're almost out of Javelins" Reported Pressly not a second later.

"Launch the remaining Javalins at their biggest frigate as soon as we can hit it with our spinal cannon."

After about 20 seconds of high speed maneuvering the Normandy launched her last Javelin missiles and shortly after that the Mass accelerator started shooting slug after slug towards the largest Geth Frigate. They were all stopped by the enemies shields but those were severely damaged in return

Suddenly the Normany started shaking as multiple Geth shots hit the ship with deadly precision. "Kinetic barriers are down to almost at 20 percent, I'm putting the engine in overdrive, let's hope the guys in engineering can handle it." Shouted Joker when the shaking finally stopped.

"We have to come up with a plan" said Pressly "We can't win if we keep going like this."

"Do you have a better idea?" asked Anderson in return.

Pressly was about to shake his head when Shepard spoke up.

"I have a plan."

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_Location: Escape pod Azula-5_

Liara watched in Horror as their unknown savoir circled around the nearby Geth ships at ridiculously high speeds, she could see that the Geth had trouble keeping their weapons aimed towards the unknown frigate, but for every three shots they missed one hit its target and with each hit Liara could see the barriers of the unknown ship growing fainter.

Suddenly the unknown ship launched towards the biggest Geth frigate while shooting slug after slug into the ship, just before the unknown ship would have passed the Geth frigate the shields of the Geth ship failed and Liara could see something big flying out of the belly of her savoir. The large object almost looked like a tank and pierced trough the hull of the now unprotected Geth ship. Liara could only hope that whomever was inside that tank knew how to kill Geth.

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**Last chapter I received a Private Message asking if the quotes before my chapters are of any relevance to the story, I would like to answer here so everyone can see, They are not. I put them down here purely because I like them or find them inspiring, if you have a quote made by yourself or just a quote of somebody else that you like you can send them to me by Private Messaging or just in a review and I will consider using them.**


	4. Chapter 3

**Wow, guys... Seriously... This story already has more than one hundred followers, I never expected it to become so popular.**

**I'd also like to point out that English isn't my primary language so please have some patience, I'm sure my writing skills will improve over time.**

**I would also like to take this opportunity to respond to the review Beyogi left.**

_" Interesting story. Humanity should be severely underdeveloped if the Citadel races aren't total idiots. I'd expect them to have more trouble with the geth._

_Anyway, thank you for writing this interesting story,_  
_Beyogi "_

**I beg to differ, the Systems Alliance has had almost 40 years to prepare for the Reapers now, their fleets are huge and their technology far more developed thanks to the working Prothean tech and the huge amounts of money that's being pumped into the Alliance R&D.**

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"If we don't end war, war will end us."

~Herbert George Wells; 1866-1946

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_Date: 21 of January 2183 (Earth calendar)  
Location: Unknown Geth Frigate currently in combat with SSV Normandy (Systems Alliance Stealth Reconnaissance Frigate)_

The Mako shook violently as it impacted with the hull of the Geth frigate and fell onto the floor below the hull. As soon as the tank stopped moving Shepard opened the escape hatch above him and looked around the hostile ship.

The first thing he noticed was the large hull breach that the Mako had dropped through, John could see the empty void of space before him and was glad for the full combat gear with oxygen and mag-boots build into his armor. It seemed that the Geth had gravity nor air inside their ships, or they had but they turned it of in an attempt to slow their advance through the ship. Shepard didn't know which one it was, Alliance Intelligence had downloaded all the relevant information of the Extranet but the other races knew almost nothing about them.

Shepard's thoughts were disturbed when a small group of Geth mobile platforms started shooting the Alliance marines, he quickly reacted by diving for the nearest piece of cover, Kaiden Alenko was already there returning fire. Shepard's HUD told him there were nine hostile Geth units attacking them, five normal Troopers four Shock Troopers and one Geth Prime.

Shepard quickly grabbed his assault rifle and tore a shock trooper apart with the large rounds after an other marine had taking down the machines shields.

"Grenades on the Prime!" Shouted Shepard after he saw a few other Geth go down, three marines took a grenade from their utility belt and three high explosive grenades hit their mark after a loud explosion the once mighty foe was reduced into a large pile of red hot metal.

And just as quickly as the fight began it was over, the last Geth Shock trooper was thrown out of the hull breach the Alenko's biotics.

"Move up towards the drive core!" Shouted Shepard and all the marines fell in behind him.

It took the squad some minutes of carefully navigating before they finally reached the drive core of the ship, they did not encounter any more Geth on their way. Shepard became very nervous because of this, it was not possible that the few Geth they shot up when they entered were all the mobile platforms on board so he and his soldiers were very careful not to run into any ambushes.

A private named Jenkins was the first one to step into the drive core and Shepard had to watch with horror as the metal fist of a Geth Shock trooper connected with his helmet and shattered the bullet proof glass. Kaiden Alenko acted quickly and put of a biotic barrier to protect the private's face but it was too late, the man did not survive the split second that his face was exposed to the vacuum of space. Shepard quickly raised his assault rifle and shot the Geth down together with the rest of the Alliance team, after they secured the drive core and killed the few remaining Geth Shepard quicky ran over to where Jenkins was lying on the ground.

"Dammit!" Kaiden said as Shepard stopped next to him "I should have been faster, I could safe him but was too late."

"There was nothing you could do" Answered Shepard somberly "nobody alive could have raised that barrier fast enough so don't blame yourself." Kaiden seemed to think about Shepard's words and finally nodded "I guess you're right Commander."

Shepard took one more look at the face of the Private before moving on it was a bloody mess, there was nothing left where his eyes should be Shepard knew there should have been blood but then remembered that the blood had boiled away while Jenkins was still alive. A shudder went down Shepard's spine when he tried to imagine the pain he must have felt when he died.

"Get him onto a stretcher, we take him with us when we leave... Nobody gets left behind..." Said Shepard before moving on, a couple of squad member quickly ran over to the body and unfolded a stretcher, Shepard knew they would handle it and turned his attention back to the drive core itself.

Ashley Williams walked over to him when she noticed that Shepard was ready to move on. "Tech's say its impossible to hack it with our current resources and advice to fall back too the old fashioned method of blowing it up." She tried to say cheerfully but even over the radio and through his earpiece Shepard could tell that she took the death of Jenkins hard.

"Good" Shepard with a faint smile on his face "Plant the bomb."

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**See you all next chapter! I hope I can update a bit more quickly now but I'm afraid I can't make any promises.**


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